Deriving the Meaning of Unknown Words From Multiple Contexts

Abstract

Students from 11 to 12 years old were invited to derive the meaning of five unknown words, each embedded in three contexts. We focused on the students' proficiency in three activities: decontextualization of the target word meanings from the contexts (decontextualization), testing initial ideas about the word meanings with subsequent contexts (cumulative testing), and formulating dictionarylike definitions (defining). We compared eight students of high and eight students of low verbal ability. The students were led individually through the process of deriving the meaning of the target words, while thinking aloud. The study showed that even young students of low verbal ability are capable of performing meaning-derivation activities that are in general ascribed to mature students of high verbal ability.

Deriving word meaning from written context: a process analysis

“…Shefelbine (1990) characterizes incidentally and deliberately deriving word meaning from context as 'typical' and 'maximum performance', respectively. Whereas incidental word learning has not been a subject of think-aloud study, deliberately deriving word meaning from context has been studied with similar procedures and directions in think-aloud research on the same task in experimental studies (van Daalen-Kapteijns & Elshout-Mohr, 1981;van Daalen-Kapteijns et al, 2001;Waern, 1982Waern, , 1988Werner & Kaplan, 1952) and in ethnographic studies (Harmon, 1998(Harmon, , 1999. The present study was thus focused on 'maximum performance' and on strategies that are used when students deliberately derive word meaning from context.…”

Neurophysiological mechanisms involved in language learning in adults

“…In order to extract the correct meaning, learners should selectively focus their attention on the relevant conceptual information of the context to correctly guess the meaning of the new word. This ability may depend on individual differences in verbal reasoning and working memory, which might help to 'pick up' those relevant aspects of the contexts that could provide the clues to the meaning of the new word (Sternberg 1987;van Daalen-Kapteijns et al 2001). Interestingly, Chaffin et al (2001) studied the inference of meaning from context using eye-movement recording.…”

Summer Reading: Predicting Adolescent Word Learning from Aptitude, Time Spent Reading, and Text Type

“…In one study, highvocabulary fifth-grade students outperformed low-vocabulary students in six out of seven meaning-determination tasks (McKeown, 1985). In another study, 11-and 12-year-old students with strong vocabularies were more successful than those with weak vocabularies at processes connected with deriving word meaning from context and providing a definition based on multiple exposures to a new word in context (van Daalen-Kapteijns, Elshout-Mohr, & de Glopper, 2001). This is not to say that students who are below grade level in vocabulary knowledge cannot learn new words with good instruction (Nash & Snowling, 2006;Schwanenflugel, Stahl, & McFalls, 1997).…”